When we imagine someone finding hidden treasures, we may think of uncovering massive shipwrecks
under the ocean, or explorers discovering the legendary golden city of El Dorado.
It turns out that ordinary people can find hidden treasure just about anywhere in the
world.
In these 10 stories, people were just going about their normal lives when they stumbled
upon an unexpected fortune.
10.
Golden Opportunity
Life as a janitor is never easy, and it’s not a career path that normally leads someone
to become a millionaire.
But for one sanitation worker in South Korea, another person’s trash is truly someone
else’s treasure.
In April 2018, a janitor working at the Incheon International Airport was changing the bags
in a garbage can, and discovered solid gold bars hiding at the bottom of the bin that
were wrapped in newspaper.
They were worth 70 million won, or $64,807 US.
This employee (who wished to remain anonymous) turned the bounty in to the police, since
he suspected that the gold bars were most likely connected to some sort of crime.
In South Korea, there is a “finder’s keepers” law, which says that anyone who turns in an
item to the police is entitled to keep it if it is not claimed after six months.
There is also a “lost articles act” which says that even if the original owner shows
up to get their bars of gold, the janitor still gets to keep between 5-20% of the total
value as a reward for turning it on.
Considering that these bars were hidden for a reason, the likelihood of the real owner
claiming them is slim-to-none.
9.
Always Double-Check
The Cerezo family was going through an awful series of tragedies. 14-year-old Savannah
Cerezo died in 2012, and in 2015, the family was going through financial problems, and
their home went into foreclosure.
Most people who buy lottery tickets watch the numbers on live TV with eager anticipation,
but for Ricardo Cerezo, he simply bought lottery tickets every week out of habit, because he
had some small hope that everything would get better.
Before she died, Savannah gave her parents a cookie jar as a gift.
Ricardo treasured one of the last tokens of his daughter’s memory, so he kept all of
his lottery tickets and other valuables in the jar.
After several months of accumulating tickets, Cerezo’s wife threatened to throw out the
slips of paper if he didn’t clean up.
So, Cerezo took all of the tickets to his local gas station to have the clerk scan them.
One of the tickets said, “file a claim.”
He called the Illinois State Lottery, and found out that his ticket was worth $4.85
million.
8.
Unique Taste Pays Off
Sometimes, when you go to a museum, a piece of artwork looks so simple, you cannot help
but think, “I could do that.”
Ben Nicholson is one of those artists.
In his most famous works, he layered blocks of colors, and sometimes did landscapes and
sculptures.
One woman named Jo Heaven was doing some thrift shopping in 2015 when she spotted a picture
with a scene of horses, deer, and houses screen printed on cloth.
Despite the fact that the image looked like an elementary schooler created it on MS Paint,
Heaven recognized the name of English artist Ben Nicholson, because her mother was an art
teacher.
She also had a taste for art that was weird and quirky, so she actually intended to keep
it for herself, and had no idea it was worth anything.
When she got home, she was shocked to find out that it was actually pretty valuable.
She eventually sold it for £4,200 or $5,691 at auction, and gave 10% of that back to the
charity shop in Swindon where she originally purchased it.
7.
Between the Pages
In 2012, a man named Carlos went to his local book exchange in Marlborough, Massachusetts.
The program allowed locals to bring in their old books, and they could pick an equal amount
to trade and take home with them.
When Carlos got into his car with the stack of books, he opened one to skim the pages.
He was shocked to see that it had been hollowed out, and had roughly $20,000 inside, along
with other valuables.
Instead of keeping it a secret, he tried to figure out who the original owner was.
There was no name written in the book, and he had no idea who left it behind.
Carlos contacted the local news, saying that if the true owner comes forward by sending
him an e-mail, he would give it back.
They just needed to identify the name of the book, the approximate amount of money inside.
They also needed to identify the other valuable objects that were hidden away.
There was never a follow-up to this story, so we’ll probably never know if he got to
keep the money, or if he reunited the treasure with its owner.
6.
Under the Sea
A fisherman living on the Palawan Island in the Philippines dropped the anchor of his
boat, and he noticed that it was stuck on something.
He dove underwater to check, and the anchor was caught on the biggest clam he had seen
in his entire life.
He pried the mouth open, hoping to possibly find a pearl that he could sell to a jeweler.
Instead of the stereotypical ball-shaped pearl, he found a massive white mound that weighed
75 pounds.
It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.
Since this wasn’t the typical pearl that could be made into a necklace, he assumed
it was worthless, and decided to keep it under his bed as a good luck charm.
The man’s aunt, a woman named Aileen Cynthia Maggay-Amurao, works as a tourism officer
for Palawan Island, and she was looking for ways to attract more people to come visit,
bringing in some much-needed tourist dollars to help the local economy.
Her nephew figured that this was such an odd object, maybe people would be interested in
seeing it.
So he brought the pearl to his aunt, and she put it on display behind glass.
Once word got out about the story of this massive pearl, they discovered that it was
valued at $100 million.
5.
Sometimes, Hard Work Pays Off
The Elliot family had been tenants of a farm in Somerset County, England for years.
After working the land for decades, they were finally able to get a mortgage to purchase
the property in 1998.
Cousins Kevin and Martin Elliot were running the farm together, so they decided that since
the land now belonged to them, they could get out a metal detector and see if they could
find anything buried on the land.
They knew that the property was very old, and it had been used as farm land for thousands
of years.
So when they pulled out the metal detector, they were not disappointed.
They found 9,213 silver Roman denarius coins.
There were so many, they had to carry them in buckets back to the house.
After they were confident that they found all of the coins, they sold them to the Somerset
County Museum for £265,000, or $358,224.35 US.
While there is no report as to what the Elliots did with the money, it very well may be that
the land paid for itself.
4.
A Frugal Shopper’s Fantasy
Almost everyone who moved into their very first apartment had to buy things from a thrift
store to furnish it, but almost no one has ended up with a fortune because of it.
In 2007, a college student living in Berlin, Germany needed by buy a couch, so she headed
to a local flea market to save money finding second-hand furniture.
She paid $215 for a couch with a pull-out bed.
When she got it back to her apartment, she pulled out the bed to test it, and a tiny
10-by-12 inch painting was hiding inside.
There was no signature on it, and she was unsure of its value, so she brought it to
a local art auction.
It turns out that the painting was from the 1600s, and it was painted by a friend of a
famous Venetian painter named Carlo Saraceni.
It was given the name “Preparation for Escape to Egypt” and it sold for $27,630.
3.
A Gift From the Past
In France, crumbling chateaus are passed around to extended family every generation.
The amount of work that would go into fixing up a mansion or castle and the responsibilities
that come with it far outweigh the building’s actual value.
Many older homes in aristocratic families remain untouched for several generations,
and they fall into disrepair when the children choose to live their own lives in modern-day
houses and apartments rather than dealing with their ancestor’s home.
So, when one heir (who wished to remain anonymous) inherited their family home in Normandy in
2016, it was still filled with antiques and old belongings from years before.
They decided to move the furniture, and there were tin boxes covered in a thick layer of
dust.
Hidden inside were gold bars and coins that were worth $3.7 million.
The one and only downside it that they have to pay inheritance taxes after the sale.
Even so, that should be more than enough money to make necessary renovations on the crumbling
estate.
2.
Scraping the Bottom of the Barrel
Recycling plants take in scrap metal to melt it down and re-use.
The plants hold various metal parts inside of bins, and an employee of Blue Grass Recycling
in Burlington, Kentucky named Mike Rogers was cleaning out one of these barrels when
he spotted green at the bottom.
They were vintage US savings bonds that ranged anywhere from $50 to $500 each, and they were
worth a total of $22,000.
Someone must have accidentally donated a coffee can or metal container that held the bonds.
When he got home from work, Rogers and his wife did some research to figure out who the
original owner was.
After doing some research, the only information he got was that these were purchased by a
woman named Martha Dobbins, and they were for “Robert Roberts.”
It may sound like a name that no one would dare to give their child, but Rogers actually
found hundreds of men named “Robert Roberts” and he had no idea how to find the real owner.
Instead of giving up, he contacted every single Robert Roberts in the country, simply asking
if they knew a woman named Martha Dobbins.
When he finally found the right man, it turns out that he was 82-years-old, and his mother
had died years before.
She was secretly saving bonds for her son as a way to thank him for caring for her in
her old age, but she died before she could tell him about it, which is why the money
was accidently given away.
Just a few days before Christmas, Mr. Roberts got a huge gift he would have never expected.
1.
Underground Bling
A farmer in Uekan, Switzerland was walking around his cherry orchard when he spotted
something shining underneath the dirt.
He started to dig, and found silver Roman coins.
There had been a nearby Roman settlement 1,700 years ago in Switzerland, and that field was
used for farming back then, as well.
Thankfully, there had never been any homes built on top of the land, so the artifacts
had remained untouched for all that time.
The owner of the orchard called in professional archaeologists to dig up the cherry orchard
in order to uncover as many artifacts as they could.
In the end, they recovered 4,166 coins.
Historians estimated that this amount of money would have been equal to one or two years
of wages for a Roman.
Sadly, this farmer doesn’t get to sell the coins for thousands of dollars.
There is a law in Switzerland that says that these kinds of historic artifacts belong to
the Swiss people, even if it was found on private property.
So the farmer got a finder’s fee, and the coins went to
a museum.